RealPlayer on Ubuntu Gutsy

Another example of user-unfriendliness of Linux: Remember I called RealPlayer a success from my experience with Feisty? I followed the same steps on my brother's PC, on which we install straight from the Gutsy Live CD, but it didn't work. The installer complained libstdc++5 is missing. Sounds like this version was included in Feisty but not Gutsy. At that time we couldn't get it connected to the internet so apt-get was out of the equation. Fortunately we were able to download the .deb package from here on another machine.

Another alternative (probably a better one anyway) is to bypass RealPlayer completely and install the codec and MPlayer plugin instead. Of course that would be easier if one has internet connection.

Wine problem on Gutsy

We got an error when we follow WineHQ's suggestion on installing Wine thru apt-get. Basically it complains about the dependency on libaudio2 but it is not installable.

Solution? Open Synaptic Package Manager and follow
sdibias's reply on this thread

How I got rid of Frethog!generic

My computer was infected by the trojan Frethog!generic when I accidentally clicked on an unknown Chinese website last week. My CA Anti-virus (got it free from SBC Yahoo as a DSL customer) discovered it very quickly. Unfortunately, it was only able to remove copies of the virus but not the "original." I googled it immediately but couldn't find much info at first. The first thing I found out was that it was a password stealer. And that's enough to make me lose sleep. Since I was not able to find a quick solution, the next best thing I did was turn off the computer and unplug it from the network.

Fortunately I found a solution from Google later:
1) download a program called ComboFix from here or here.
2) reboot your PC, hit F8 before Windows started and start Windows in "Safe mode"
3) execute ComboFix.exe. It will start a "Text" window and scan your system for "bad stuff." This may take a long time (~10 min for me) After it removed the bad files, it will ask you to reboot. The program resumes after reboot and finally generate a report which includes all files created on your system recently. So in case it cannot find the offender, you still get a clue on what files could possibly be infecting your system.

Even though I dodged a bullet this time, I think it's a sign that I should finally seriously consider to switch OS on my primary workstation. Please read my next post!

Acer monitor "No signal" workaround

Another "tech support" post: 2 months after I bought my new Acer 24" LCD monitor, I ran into the infamous "No signal" problem which seems to be a common one for Acer LCD owners. And I found the workaround from these customer reviews, i.e., unplug the mon for 1 min and try again.

It worked for me twice so far. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Outlook import workaround

My previous post "My X'mas Present" inspired me to write more "tech support" related post. Hopefully this is going to drive more traffic to my blog >:)

I'd like to share with the public a solution to this Outlook 2002 import problem I ran into: when I imported my address book from Outlook Express to Outlook 2002 following this instruction, all my entries appears as last name followed by first name with no space in between, for example, "GatesWilliam", which just look strange! I'd prefer "Gates, William" instead. (BTW, importing from CSV file has the same problem too)

And my search for this solution wasted 3 hours of my precious time :( Apparently it is not a very common problem. (Or people just don't care!) Finally I found this USENET news posting, which led me to the workaround. It is based on VBScript but don't worry if you don't write BASIC. All you need to do is cut-and-paste.

Now I'm one happy Outlook Address book owner!

You might wonder why I couldn't just use the Outlook Express Address book and forget about Outlook. Well, it's because my new Pocket PC only sync with Outlook, but not Outlook Express. BTW, this step completed my long overdued personal project: address book consolidation. I no longer have to live with all slightly different and somwhat outdated info in my Palm/Phone/Webmail address books!